


she whom others call spring

by Dayadhvam



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Flash Fic, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dayadhvam/pseuds/Dayadhvam
Summary: Haggar and the druids, alliances and loss. The aftermath of victory is no less complicated.





	she whom others call spring

**Author's Note:**

> Written (belatedly!) for the [Ladies of Voltron week](https://ladiesofvoltron.tumblr.com/lovweek); I was trying to turn this into a longer, plottier piece but then lost steam, so instead here are four loosely connected flash fics for four loosely interpreted prompts:
>
>> 1\. day 1: _gemstones_  
>  2\. day 2: _loyalty_  
>  3\. day 4: _role swap/reversal_  
>  4\. day 3: _seasons_
> 
>   
>  The title is from Anna Akhmatova's "[Poem Without a Hero](https://dtriad.tumblr.com/post/159021416666/she-alone-leans-over-me-she-whom-others-call)." 

1\. 

Deep down into the earth she walked, haloed by light, and in silence she counted a thousand paces till the face of a prismatic cell came into sight.

It was lit like an alchemist’s lab of old, but bare like the prison it was meant to be. Allura raised a hand to brush away the wards as she would a curtain, and slipped without thought through the refractive crystal. Haggar was waiting, unhooded and unsmiling; she looked up as Allura entered, and said, her voice gone threadbare, “Not satisfied, Princess?”

“Don’t mock me,” Allura replied. “You’ve never been satisfied, Honerva. Not ten thousand years ago, and not now.”

“You use that name as if it mattered,” Haggar rasped. “Do you think more kindly of me when you do? Foolish thing. Your weakness is the guilt you assume in exchange for your consumption.”

“I’m waiting. _Honerva_.” Allura spat out her words like poison. “In all my weakness.”

The cuffs on Haggar’s wrists shimmered violently with a flash of juniberry pink—and then at last Haggar was made to come forward. Her mouth curved with cold delight and her hair slipped aside to reveal in full the markings on her face: still Altean, though warped… And now closer. The sick shine of her eyes, like cosmic olivine. The cool touch of her fingers, like pale grass. With her teeth she worried at a gleaming gem—acid violet, fluorescing with every hiss of air.

“A soul for a secret,” echoed Haggar’s voice. “Satisfied, Princess?”

Her lips were chill and dry. Allura sighed; their breaths mingled, and in her mouth she tasted the gem and ground it to dust. Giddiness contracted her throat, heat pooled within her skull, and she opened her eyes and saw a yellow gleam reflected back—

—shuddered—

—and opened her eyes, again.

She woke from the dream into darkness above the earth. Between her lips lingered the ghost of a gem: the secret of a life, a soul.

 

2.

How did one solve a problem like the druids? In Allura’s hands, they were utterly unmoored. “I thought they _wanted_ to serve,” she said to Lotor, soon after the tumultuous battle in which they’d finally disposed of Zarkon—they’d picked off ships, drained away quintessence, repaid the murderous favor that he’d done for Alfor. Allura had watched as his fiery eyes sputtered and went out, with her mind overcrowded by the days of a life past when even Zarkon was loved. She’d felt little gladness—and a little pity, a little rage. She’d almost thrown up.

“Oh, trust me,” said Lotor, though Allura was still sparing with hers; he smiled with teeth far too often for her liking. Theirs was a complicated alliance. “They hardly volunteered. Haggar loved her toys, best of all the ones who didn’t talk back.”

 _You must have displeased your mother all the time_ , Allura didn’t say, for there were some truths she didn’t care to share. Instead: “The druids did talk. And fight.” _And kill._

“Exactly the way she willed them to,” Lotor retorted. “So very loyal of them. They never even had the choice. We pride ourselves on doing better than that… don’t we, Princess?”

“When the druids understand that I’m not their new handler, I’ll tell you,” said the Princess.

Allura didn’t always trust Lotor in their agreement on how to best dismantle the Empire, but on the matter of his generals she could not doubt his sincerity, or theirs. She could tell as much from her conversations with Ezor and Acxa whenever one or the other might arrive as Lotor’s envoy. They’d chosen to be loyal—neither they nor the Paladins could be accused of being mere puppets.

Those who had become druids weren’t so lucky. Allura had once, in passing, asked a druid to remove its mask, and then recoiled—for she’d seen in its face the echo of another: a face emptied of free will, in the name of peace that reigned supreme. _Finally, our wars can end._

 

3.

“Do you remember when we went to see the gardens of Jarre? That year the rumdullas were in full bloom. I think—yes, it was near the time of the ecliptic crossing, because the ugly kaleid-eyewear was _everywhere_. You were telling me about how rumdulla spines were harvested for the sweetsting candies you’d sneak to me—Father was always so frustrated when his stash disappeared! Anyway, then poor Rozenor was felled by the poisonous vapors at a nearby patch, so we helped carry him off for treatment. Really, he should’ve known better; you did warn him, after all.

“At least we knew how to treat him for the vapors. I’ve tried talking with the druids about your condition, but Haggar was more of an anchor for their minds than I thought. They’ve got missing gaps in their knowledge—they don’t even really remember who they used to be. And I’m afraid to pick apart their link to me, because what if that kills them? Well, I bet it’s what Haggar wanted. If she couldn’t have them for herself…

“Maybe I should just do it again. I didn’t mean to, before—but you were gone and she was there and we _had_ to take her out of the fight. It made me feel sick—seeing double, thinking double, me and her. But I might get information out of it. A secret. How else can I learn to fix what Haggar did to them? To _you?_

“… You must’ve hated seeing me in cryostasis as much as I hate it for you— _now_ of all times, now that we’ve _won_. Oh, Coran, I wish you could’ve seen the look on Zarkon’s face at the end. We needed an opening, we were all trying to catch him off guard—and my imitation wasn’t perfect, of course, since all I had were imperfect memories—

“—but still, he wasn’t expecting Honerva.”

 

4.

The fractured Galra Empire struggled on in its death throes as the seasons came and went. Hunk kept track in Earth time with a self-made calendrical calculator, and as one gave way to the next he was sure to alert Allura. Then a Paladin would make an official visit to Earth to update authorities on the Voltron Coalition’s reconstruction efforts; to bolster the regional shield network set up for the solar neighborhood; to inspect the alarm field on the probe that orbited dwarf planet Makemake. The current five pilots were supposed to rotate into the role, but Keith always passed on his turn.

Allura visited the Earthlings’ planet only for the first trip. They’d sent word in advance, and when she and Shiro had emerged from the Black Lion and set foot upon the desert ground outside the Garrison, they’d known to expect an array of personnel—curious, wary, but not wholly hostile. Allura had given them a diplomat’s smile.

But Shiro did not follow suit: he only had eyes for two people. He said to the first one, disbelievingly, “Sir. I thought—but security protocol—“

The man called _Sir_ wore a black cap that shielded his bald head from the raging sun. He snorted. “I know you all call me bitchy Mitch, but I’m not completely heartless.”

The second one was an old woman in a wheeled chair. Allura watched Shiro go forward—slowly at first, his gait unsteady, before he broke into a wild sprint—and he skidded to a stop and he fell to his knees and he buried his face in the old woman’s lap—

And there, at last, he wept.

“Oh, _Shiro_ ,” she said to him, her voice low and brittle. “I told you all along, didn’t I? I didn’t help your mother raise you to die in a fight.”

What Shiro choked out in reply was barely audible even to Allura, who was possessed of excellent hearing—but no, she wouldn’t allow herself to listen. Shiro had never talked about his family and home, but she thought now that perhaps the yearning had been too painful to form even as a dream. Shiro might well be undone by reunion just as Allura had once been undone by farewell.

Tears threatened to prick the corners of her eyes, and she hated that they might spill out of hopeless envy. So she looked away, and met the gaze of the black-capped man with open appraisal. No matter the trials or the tries to throw her off-kilter, she could play her role well, and kept smiling a diplomat’s smile. “Commander Iverson, I presume?” she said. “After all our intergalactic communications, I’m very pleased to meet you in person at last! I appreciate allies with heart.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” he returned with guarded warmth, and looked at the diadem bright upon her brow. “You must be Princess Allura, of Altea.”

O Altea of the glittering spires! The seasons came and went, and in all realities the Altea that she’d known as her own would remain forever the shadow of a dream. Yet here she was.

“Yes,” Allura said. “I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Cosmic olivine" appears in this out of self-indulgence, because [pallasites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallasite) are _so cool_. *___*  & _Finally, our wars can end_ is from 3x04 A Hole in the Sky.


End file.
